May 10, 2008… A day that we won’t ever forget…
The very night before, we hosted a youth lock-in at the church.
This was a few months before we left this church and found Tree Town Baptist.
It was Mother’s Day weekend, my parent’s anniversary weekend… it was a busy weekend.
Friday night, May 9… the night of the youth lock-in… we had about 50 teenagers in attendance. Jeremy and I were the volunteer youth leaders at that time. Our close friends helped us. We had other adult volunteers as well.
When you host an overnight lock-in, every minute must be planned. There can be no time for boredom. So each hour was carefully planned. You can’t let teenagers get hungry, so we also planned dinner, snacks, and breakfast.
We had enough food to feed a small army.
We were prepared.
As the night wore on, we ate, played games, and sang karaoke… and by about 4 o’clock in the morning, we were exhausted. All of our plans for cooking a homemade breakfast went out the window. First, we realized that our Walmart was a 24-hour Super Center. And then we realized that the donut shop would open by 5:00 a.m. And our best-laid plans were changed.
That homemade breakfast of biscuits, gravy, sausage, bacon… yep that quickly turned into donuts and milk. We didn’t want to make another mess to clean up and frankly most kids like donuts better than real food anyway.
We put all the breakfast food, leftover hotdogs, sandwich meat, and drinks in the refrigerator to use later. We stored the drinks and candy. We cleaned up our mess, and we headed home soon after the last kid was gone.
I will never forget the conversation we had with our friends before we left that day. All four of us were tired and sleep deprived, and sometimes that makes for the best conversation. You are too tired to have your guard up and you find yourself able to be open and honest, even vulnerable.
They were struggling with the pastor at this church as well. We weren’t the only ones struggling. This pastor had become more and more legalistic. He was digging his heels in like never before. No one was allowed to question him. He was, after all, the Man of God… the chosen one to lead us… his title alone was enough to secure him the respect he deserved. In short, this pastor was out of control.
We were very open with them and confided that we were seriously considering leaving the church. It was one of those conversations that sticks in your mind. We had been holding onto the secret that we felt we should leave and that our time at this church was ending but we were determined not to influence anyone else with our thoughts and feelings.
But that day, our friend just looked at us and said, “ya’ll have one foot out the door, don’t you .” We told him his suspicions were correct, and we didn’t know how much longer we could hold on. Letting go of that burden and sharing it with our friends felt so good. It was a turning point for us. We weren’t the only ones struggling and these friends understood. They listened to us and we listened to them. We heard each others hurts and concerns. And sometimes that’s all you need.
The kids were 7 and 4 years old. We didn’t let them stay with us at the lock-in that night. They instead stayed with my mother-in-law the night before and she agreed to keep them until we got a little rest that day as well. Jeremy would pick them up early that afternoon.
Jeremy and I left the lock-in, drove home, got ready for bed, and went to sleep. Before Jeremy left to pick up the kids that afternoon, my son called and asked if instead of coming home, him and his sister could go could eat dinner with my in-laws that night at a local restaurant and spend the night with them again. They wanted to just come to church the next day with their grandparents. On any other day I would have said yes. Heck, I wanted to sleep and rest. Letting the kids stay another night would have normally felt like the perfect solution. But, as a mom, something made me feel uncomfortable with that decision. The weather was supposed to get bad that night. The forecasters were calling for severe weather and possible tornados. So much to my son’s chagrin, I said no. Jeremy went to pick the kids up early that afternoon.
We had a lazy evening with the kids. Because we were absolutely exhausted from the lock-in the night before, by 7:30 that night, we were all in our pajamas and headed for bed. We were concerned about the weather, but when we last checked, it didn’t appear to be heading our way. Our kids were safe at home with us and we were tired.
My dad called me and asked me if we were still watching the weather. Usually, we would have continued watching and paying attention to what was going on. Still, in Arkansas, there’s almost always a chance for severe weather in the spring. This particular night, our exhaustion won, and we chose to just go to bed instead of watching the weather as diligently as normal.
I told him we weren’t watching and that we were just about to go to bed. My dad is usually very easygoing, but that night he was adamant that we get dressed and pay attention to the weather. We turned the news on to watch our local station, and sure enough, a tornado warning was issued for our immediate area. We stepped outside just as the sky turned green. Something was off. This was the real deal. And then we heard the weatherman call the name of the country road right next to our house. This wasn’t a common road. This road literally led to nowhere. The weatherman wasn’t using this road to warn a massive amount of people. This road was only known by the locals… he was warning us…This wasn’t a good sign.
We rushed inside to get under the mattresses we had placed in the hall, and we waited. Although we felt the shift in the air and heard the sound of the train so common to tornadoes, it never touched down. We know we were in the direct path because there’s a picture somewhere of the tornado in the field behind our house. It was close. The tornado stayed together and continued to travel straight toward the town where we went to church. The city we had just the night before held a lock-in, the town where my in-laws were having dinner…
And that is precisely where the tornado decided to sit itself down… on the exact street of the restaurant and the church.
My in-laws rushed out of town as the tornado sirens sounded. If the kids had been with them, those extra moments of buckling them into their car seats would have put them directly in the path. In fact, we would later learn that the tornado was traveling parallel to the road they drove going home.
The tornado traveled right down the street the church was on. And though the church wasn’t a total loss, the building was damaged. The room we had been in just a night before sustained the most damage as the skylights crashed into the room. The gym building had boards from nearby houses stuck in the side. A 2×4 piece of lumber pierced the side of the brick building. We still don’t know how that happened, but it was surreal and a very visible example of just how crazy the winds were.
Many people weren’t as lucky. The tornado did extensive damage to houses, businesses… The houses all around the church lost their roofs. The grain company down the street had recently built new grain storage. It was destroyed. The tornado picked a rail car up off the tracks and set it on the ground. Trailer houses were reduced to piles of insulation blown across the street into ditches. The damage was severe. It would later be determined that the tornado was an EF3 that traveled 21 miles.
We frantically called our friends and family. Unfortunately, the phone system shut down for a long time as we tried to get a call through.
When we finally went to bed that night, we were sure everyone we knew was safe, but we couldn’t see the damage until the sun came up the following day.
Jeremy left early the next morning to see what he could do to help. He was able to get in before the National Guard locked the affected area down.
He was able to call me after he got there.
It looked terrible, he said, but the church was still standing. The neighborhood around the church hadn’t fared as well.
I headed over soon after with the kids in tow. By then, the National Guard had moved in, and it took some sweet talking to get in. They had blocked several roads.
I remember thinking that the town looked like a war zone. I had never seen anything like it in my entire life.
The church was in a low-income area of town. I’ve talked about that before in the blog. We had been unable to effectively reach the neighborhood. But this day, May 11, 2008, things were different. It was a Sunday, and any other Sunday, we would be dressed up, sitting inside the building, singing hymns, and reading our King James Version Bibles… but the services were canceled this Sunday, we were outside, and people in the neighborhood were out walking around. Their houses were destroyed, and those whose houses were still standing, they had no power. The stores in town didn’t have power either, so there was nowhere to get food… They were hungry… and you know what we had… we had tons of leftover food from the lock-in! The food was still cold in the refrigerator…Jeremy and I started making sandwiches and hot dogs and gathering chips and candy… we walked to the parking lot and handed them out to the community. When we ran out, we switched to Plan B. The electricity was out, but the gas wasn’t. The gym had an old gas stove, so we lit the oven and a burner and started baking biscuits and cooking sausage. We handed that out until it was gone. This all happened before the Salvation Army, The Red Cross, or the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief made it into town.
Amid this tornado tragedy, we were able to minister in a way we had never been before, and it was awesome.
The Salvation Army was headquartered at our church by early that afternoon, and the National Guard used the church as a place to sleep and shelter.
For the next month, we continued to be a place where people could get help. The Salvation Army stayed there for a few weeks. We learned so much about ministry from them. The whole situation became one of the most extraordinary learning experiences of my life.
I think about that moment in time a lot. Those weeks of boots-on-the-ground ministry are some of my favorites. Some that I will never forget.
It didn’t matter that we disagreed with the pastor, it didn’t matter what Bible version we were using or any of the other legalistic crap… we were simply Christ followers, fulfilling the immediate need of our community… it was beautiful.
No one was killed in that tornado. It was a true miracle.
I wonder what it might have been like if the tornado had come just one day earlier when all those kids were at the church for the lock-in. What might have happened if I had said yes to letting the kids go eat with my in-laws.
It was a scary time, but it created the best ministry opportunity I’ve had to date.
Of course, we all know why this is on my mind… the EF3 tornado that hit Little Rock just a few days ago brought back all those memories.
I’ve watched the news and seen all the damage… and in the midst of that, I’ve seen churches coming together to serve their community. I’ve seen restaurants providing food for first responders and those who have been displaced. During a live stream, I even heard a reporter remark about how amazing it was to see churches out in the community.
The church is getting out of the building where they are supposed to be.
I spoke to a friend of ours who is pastoring a church in the middle of some of the hardest-hit areas of Little Rock. Jeremy and I shared some of our experiences from 2008 with him. We encouraged him and told him that he was about to experience some of the most incredible ministry opportunities ever.
People are open when they are hurting. They are softer and more vulnerable. They need Jesus in a way they have never needed Him before. And we, as a church, get the opportunity to share that Jesus with them.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… I just can’t make myself believe that the country club version of the church that is so prevalent today is what Jesus intended for it to be. Locked inside the walls, singing our favorite songs, stroking each other’s ego, checking those good Christian boxes on our checklists…
We were made for something more…
… we were made to serve…
Until Next time,
Whitney
P.S. I know this isn’t The Path Part 3. But it’s coming, I promise.